July 5, 2010

The team conducted three busts before the one at Colorado Collective, making a half-dozen arrests, seizing $7,265 in cash and 43 pounds of marijuana at Kush Korner II in Wilmington, Nirvana Pharmacy in Westwood and Kind for Cures in a former Kentucky Fried Chicken store in Palms.

21 comments:

Stealing the cash is the whole point of the enforcement exercise. The Supreme Court completely blew it on civil forfeiture law in the '90s. Cleaning out pot stores is just one of its manifestations. Go to an airport with a one-way ticket and a lot of cash, get pulled over for a traffic stop and searched (including illegally) and you'll get the same treatment. You may be right but your money was stolen.

It's a complicated issue, and people can have good points on either side, but when I think about the act of a free person smoking a plant privately and then having the state, arrest him, try him, and fine or incarcerate him for it, it just seems immoral and un-American at it's core.

"Wait until MaryJane is legalized and all the potheads are manufacturing, driving, etc."

I don't think there will be any visible change. It's been virtually legal here in California for a while now. Other than the highly visible dispensaries, there is nothning new. I don't know a single person who tried pot just because they could legally now. It's just the same people, but their money is not going to murderous gangs now.

With the inordinate amount of time spent on pot enforcement gone, the cops should be able to improve real crime problems.

Incidentally, I see people driving very dangerously all the time. They usually appear to be the overly timid type or the overconfident type. Neither is usually the pothead type. Of course, that's just my stringent scientific analysis.

"Wait until MaryJane is legalized and all the potheads are manufacturing, driving, etc."

I don't think there will be any visible change. It's been virtually legal here in California for a while now. Other than the highly visible dispensaries, there is nothning new. I don't know a single person who tried pot just because they could legally now. It's just the same people, but their money is not going to murderous gangs now.

With the inordinate amount of time spent on pot enforcement gone, the cops should be able to improve real crime problems.

Incidentally, I see people driving very dangerously all the time. They usually appear to be the overly timid type or the overconfident type. Neither is usually the pothead type. Of course, that's just my stringent scientific analysis.

In the immortal words of the Governator, "That's just California". Wait till it happens in real (as opposed to surreal) states.

Wait until MaryJane is legalized and all the potheads are manufacturing, driving, etc.

Yes, I'm sure the only thing stopping people from driving under the influence is that pot is illegal. They're probably sitting around thinking "I don't mind paying a $1500 fine, going to jail for two days, losing my license for six months, and being on probation for three years -- but that $100 for possession of marijuana is just too much to take!".

In case that sarcasm flew right over your head: the penalty for possession and use of marijuana is trivial. The penalty for DUI is draconian. The idea that getting rid of the former will make the latter more popular is nuts.

God forbid all these sissy modern day pot smokers have to get dope the old fashioned way.

Well, that's the problem, isn't it? People who have been law-abiding citizens their whole lives, who now find themselves needing marijuana for medical purposes, probably don't KNOW any pot dealers. People who smoke recreationally aren't much inconvenienced by the closing of marijuana dispensaries; people who need it as medicine are.